Management platforms are integrated products that provide for the management of virtual infrastructure, public cloud environments, private cloud environments, hybrid cloud environments, containers, software-defined networks, software-defined storage, middleware and its applications, and physical data centers (which include many racks each of which has many computers, network devices, and storage devices all interconnected). Management platforms provide scalable self-service interfaces, provision virtual system images, enable metering and billing, and provide workload optimization through established policies.
Management platforms enable environment management tasks on top of a virtual infrastructure. Such management tasks may include, but are not limited to, providing a self-service portal and capabilities for granular permission for user access, metering and billing for chargeback and showback, ability to provision new instances and applications for an application catalog or from image templates, integration points with existing system management, service catalogs, and configuration management software, and an ability to control and automate the placement and provisioning of new instances based on business and security policies.